"Aaron Swartz is what I wish I was."

I am too a cold, rational bastard and yet I've found myself fighting tears over and over these last two days. And I barely knew who Aaron was until two days ago.

But I think the OP nailed it, for me and I'm sure for many more. I can still recall when I was an idealist as a child and a young teen. But I preferred to become cynical rather than suffer from injustices in the world. Much easier to be above, untouched, than fight for change and inevitably suffer, a lot.

But we still viscerally admire somebody like Aaron, somebody who took the hard route, somebody we could have been but hadn't the courage to.

That's why we suffer so much today, the best part of us has died.